Tag Archives: Poetry

My Culture Walk

by Gerardine Baugh

I am an anomaly. A person of color, that grew up in a neighborhood of even more color. Fact: life’s color doesn’t reflect from your skin. When I was a kid I had no idea I was one color or another until I was called out and told that my skin color was wrong, different, strangely overrated. Easily trapped like those Chicago rats, a Norway rat from Asia a migrant, a refugee deformed by poisons consumed. Rats chew through wood, glass, metal with teeth that continued to grow never really wearing down. Keeping them chewing, to live. To be poisoned to live to keep searching. To hunt, to quest, to explore to find a way out of the dark, avoiding death, the color of one rat no different than the other in the dark. Obscured in fur-covered skin. My hair won’t cover my skin color. I am human. I can see the rat. It pushes up from the hole under the house along the back wall near the alley close to food. Closer to the poison and no closer to getting what they need. Never seeing the color of its skin. Humans perceive one top layer. Ignoring the other six layers of protection.

Enishi Russian Blue Loves to have his nails trimmed

Color Cats Claws

by Gerardine Baugh

Trimming cats claws. Eighteen toes, five toes in front. Four toes in back. A polydactyl cat has more toes. Hemmingway’s cats have six-toes and still live in Key West. Their owner died in Ketchum, Idaho. Nails fly as they are clipped. Some cats enjoy getting their nails trimmed. Other cats complain muttering growls. Nails grown beyond their blood supply are shed like a coat of long hair, shorthaired, others hairless –cats. They comb their hair with their claws. They groom, climb, protect and hunt with their claws. Old fashion wives, jealous wives, with their tail’s tales, worried their cat will steal their breath, needed their claws removed. Misinformation places a claw as a weapon, not seen as a cat’s finger, fingers with nails that need to be trimmed, or polished. I wonder what color my cat will like, pink or blue, possibly clear.

I haven’t posted since the end of the Haiku challenge. I have been busy, busy, busy- pulling my hair out and wondering what sort of blockage is holding my muse for ransom..

Then a couple of days ago I stumbled on an article, then lost it later or I would post the link here:-( That article was an interview with a new author he or she was asked when the next book would be out, the writer said “never!” That writing that one book was horrible, he/she had no life and the mental distress it caused him/her was over whelming. I had a good laugh, then pulled out my crumpled up chapters and started over.

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

I have been sending my submissions to him through email, instead of posting on his site in the comments section. But today, I will post that poem here, and on his Blog.

I don’t get feedback by emailing him, I really don’t even know if he is getting the emails. I wanted to keep some poems unpublished, and that would be done by entering his poem a day challenge by email and not on a public forum.

Uriah is doing well, he wants the weather to warm up so pecan go hunting rabbits not that he ever caught one.

For April 4, 2011, Robert’s instructions were to “pick a type of person and write a poem about him or her”

I picked it apart so many times I didn’t know what I started with, I cut it up to only a few words then decided on the longer version.

Without further ado here’s todays poem.

“Teenager”

By Gerardine Baugh

None is more obvious than in the stance of a teenager waiting for the morning bus,

Dragging her feet across the gravel driveway she stops and stares down the road, facing away from the winds that burned her cheeks and lodged dust in her hair and eyes.

With a heavy sigh she brushes hair from her face she was hoping for a few quiet minutes on the bus to study for an algebra test, all but forgotten last night, opting instead to spend hours on the phone texting about guys.

The bus pulled to a squealing stop floating heads lean asleep against the windows no one is talking that morning ritual was left back at middle school when everyone was a chattering cercocebus.

Now excited banter is used on the ride home, an unspoken rule set by upperclassmen studying or partying or sleeping in unison, until they wake up to off color humor and mistrusts.

In one fluid movement she sets her book bag on her lap as she takes the last empty seat behind the driver hoping for a day free of surprises.

Fishing around in her bag she pockets change for the cafeteria, and pulls out a math book falling into its pages unaffected by her growling stomach and the erratic rocking of the school bus.

I have a streak of competitiveness that runs through me. So when I signed up for the Examiner and found out that they won’t pay me until I hit twenty-five dollars and only then on the twentieth of each month through PayPal. Well…

I had to get money in that first full month!

They have rules.

You have to write about your subject. Mine is plants in Hampshire.

You have to have a picture- sizes are different in article than in slide show

You have to connect your articles to each other

You have to mention local businesses

You have to write between 200 to 500 words

You should use quotes

I growled at my monitor, “Alright examiner I am up to the challenge!” I have to fix some of the earlier articles to follow the rules, while I am writing new ones.

What I found is that writing about a specific ‘subject’ is a lot harder than it sounds.

the garden faeries laughed and planted seeds of funthey whispered, it was they, whomixed up the garden, andplanted the green beans far from their trelliseggplant was placed next to the pumpkinstomatoes rolled into the neighbor’s yard they sang and danced inside the ring of mushroomstable set,feasting on strawberries and cornpotatoes and cucumbersglasses rose a toast to the gardener drink of dandelion winethe fey cheered and sang songs of times past, and those to comesome sat under mushroom umbrellas wide and white, otherssat atop, and scrutinized with words of nettles peals of laughter danced across the lawnthis, the dark end of the new moon

Remember, June 21st World Peace and Prayer Day. I posted a poem on June 4th. Take a minute and send out a prayer for the earth, a prayer to stop the oil spilling in to the Gulf and our oceans and all our lives.

The air is still hot and heavy with moisture. Add to that a mixture of bug sprays, chemicals and manure, spread across the fields by plane or tractor. At that point, breathing becomes an inflexible process.

The skies this morning were blue, then deep, dark angry grey that rumbled and barked, spitting out streaks of light, then changing back to blue.

I took Uriah out for his morning walk by sitting on the front step and waving him off. With a happy wag of his tail he headed to the pond where he startled some ducks and blackbirds. As I waited for him to return I was bombarded by annoying mosquitoes.

Uriah took his time. So I just stared out over the field grass and watched it grow.

I had the tractor running a couple of weeks ago. It had roared to life, with as much exuberance as Uriah running to the pond.

*If you didn’t get that reference, well, Uriah walks slowly sticking his head in every hole sneezing and rolling in everything that smells bad… The tractor coughed, wheezed, chugged and rolled, jerked and smelled bad…

I checked and filled the tires, added water and oil. Brushed off the cutting deck and oiled anything that moved. Once I pulled her out of the barn I decided to move that downed tree.

I was very careful..

Before I took her on the path, I stopped the engine and walked the area, poking at the ground. I didn’t want to get stuck in heavy mud, or caught up on a stump. I backed into the path and tried to get as close as I could to that tree. Driving backwards is not within my tractor maneuvering ability, so it took me a while.

Satisfied I wasn’t going to be stuck in the mud; I turned off the engine and gracefully slipped off the seat unto a wild rose bush. Ouch!

Finally I was able to wrap the chain around the back hitch and around the middle of the tree.

Once back in the driver’s seat I slowly moved forward, dragging the tree not forward but sideways, just as I planned. The trees roots were facing south and its upper branches to the north. I could only move it a few feet, or it would get caught up on the Bog Willows.

Slowly I inched forward.

Uriah was watching me from the edge of the path. As soon as I made my first lurching movement his tail disappeared between his legs and he ran towards the house. Smart dog! He remembered when that same chain broke free from the last tree I moved and went flying, taking out some branches. I had found it hanging in a tree some fifty feet away.

I hesitated for a moment and watched Uriah run. For a second, I debated what I was doing and thought that maybe this wasn’t a good idea…

That lasted for a minute.

Then I set the tractor in forward motion, slowly the chain went taut. I was very surprised when the tree moved off the path and ended up right where I wanted it to be, top facing west and roots to the East.

Nothing tried to bite me. I didn’t get the tractor stuck in the mud. The best part, I didn’t see one tick!

I removed the chain from the hitch. Then I put Uriah in his outside kennel. And came back to cut the path, I was tempting fate by not walking the path first.. But even that turned out well, so well in fact I took Uriah out for a walk..

A walk that ended with us being chased by a few angry Bumble Bees, luckily they only sting if cornered…